As usual, the most interesting material came during the Q&A, and the video just posted, with links to the full podcast from last night.
“This is me when I left Stanford. I still part my hair on the right like I did back then.
We were 30 people when I joined Microsoft. There were no business people.
We actually didn’t have very good people when we started. Bill was good. There were like 4 or 5 really good people.
I went into Bill’s office when I had been there about one month and I said we had to hire 18 more. He said, Steve, our people aren’t very good. Why are you going to hire 18 more?
When I was in business school, most students wanted to be consultants and investment bankers. Those were the hot jobs. I love them, but consultants don’t invent and most of the products investment bankers invented have been largely discredited in the current environment. Entrepreneurs who invent will add to the innovation and the economy and change the world and have a heck of a lot of fun doing it. So despite everything else, now is the time to do it.”
Q&A:
Q: on Microsoft’s search strategy?
“The number one player – Google – is a lot bigger than us in Search. We are more like a startup than a big guy in the search market. We can’t invest in everything that the market leader can. We can’t outdo and outspend someone who’s revenue is so much bigger than ours. (!!?!)
Because we are not the market leader, we can do experiments with new business models like cash back. Because we are not the market leader, we can do experiments with the user interface, which drives revenue and clickthroughs.
We are going to have to be more disruptive.”
Q on how he impacts culture with his aggressive sales videos.
“I feel like I have shaped Microsoft culture a lot.”
Q: from a student who worked on Windows Azure over the summer, and wondered whether Microsoft would commit more resources to it:
A: It’s like that 80’s movie, 3 Men and a Baby. The world is now going to be three screens and a cloud. Phone, PC, TV, Cloud. So it’s super important to us.
You don’t get the name Windows easily around Microsoft. It means you are important to us. (that made me WinCE =)
Q on Yahoo merger:
“First, as to Yahoo, it’s a long and sorted saga. In the end, I’m glad we went down the road. At the end of the day, I think it would have been valuable to get together, but it didn’t work. I still think there exists an opportunity to create a better search product by having more customers and more advertisers to generate more relevant advertising as part of the search offering. That may or may not at some point happen. There may or may not be appropriate discussions. I don’t choose to comment on that today.
Q: on MSFT innovating. What’s the vision?
He highlighted Xbox live and sharepoint. Gave props to the Apple Iphone and facebook as an “interesting concept”.
Q: Most important classes/ advice for students:
“I wish I had taken more computer science classes. To be honest. I wish I had.
I still remember the Kodak vs. Polaroid case: what the market leader should do versus a weak #2. I still quote from the darn case all the time.
The best class of all: By chance, I took a class on managing arts organizations. Engineers and scientists are awfully darned important. Engineers and scientists think more like ballerinas. The soft people management stuff, I lucked into it.”
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